pixelplucker

I have some footage that I wanted to project onto some objects to add depth, capture shadows etc of a model I wanted to bring into the scene. Typical usage of camera projection mapping. Using a light gel is a nice effect but seems too lossy and the aspect ration is wrong. Camera roto seems to be the same as camera projection, just named different? How do you set up an include or exclude for that so I can bring the model into the scene and have it not catch the roto?

Some reason I had trouble getting the roto to apply but it applied ok from the list and not within the scene. Just one last snag. Because I have some camera motion and need to track it to the scene I need to render to see the gel or I can't see what I'm working on to tweak object shapes and align AM's camera to the scene. Any work arounds on that one?

I have a test prj that I am doing this on with a Klieg light and the ground and test objects are 128, 128, 128. I'll check the intensity of the other lights.

Was looking that up, having trouble with gels working, probably my fault. Right clicked on the shortcut to my klieg light, added rotoscope and nothing shows. Changing light type also doesn't seem to work. Still using 15j and had problems with decals on the ground and ended up making a new model for ground. Added objects also don't show the gel.

Is it possible to make an ignore list or inclusive list for a particular light on particular objects? If not then I would have to render one scene with the light gel then render another with the other objects and post them together. My other option is to down sample my hd capture to standard vga in order to get the whole scene decal-ed.

I noticed a couple big set backs using decals for camera projection mapping besides the spastic positioning of the decal which is easy enough to use the numeric inputs... Low angled patches don't receive decals. Decals only apply to what is visible in the scene so your limited to just what is initially in the scene. Is there another way to do this besides decals?

Very nice modeling. I find myself importing more poly props because I don't get enough time for the projects to spline them within AM.

Haha! Happy B-Day!

Plays pretty good here. Need to speed up the blade and rotor speed, toss in some motion blur. Nice work.

You might want to use Blender for the conversion, it can import .x and export fbx. There might also be a Unity exporter some wheres for Blender. Though it is awkward to use it does work pretty well and the price is hard to beat. I use Blender as a testing program for obj and stl files.

Looks like a pretty cool model, if you do it again, you can fix the double hooks on the base of the big section where it pivots. FYI when ever I lost files the next time I redid them they came out better

Happy B-Day!

The tutorials will be an enormous help from "The Art of Animation Master" found in the store. I used to model mostly with nurbs and polygons and was a little lost when I went to AM and the tutorials got me up to speed in just a matter of a couple of days. Spline modeling is probably closer to nurb modeling than anything else but there are a few rules to follow that take getting used to. For rigging from scratch the tutorials Holmeslice posted are fantastic, I wish he made a book or if your using the 32 bit version you can use the TSM2 rigging system.

Since you have the full version of Unity, maybe we should do a text .x file so you can see how it works, have any info on the workflow?

thanks the theme is just to say hello simplified to put in evidence the character Now that would make a nice splash screen! Nice work

Things that are animated especially characters would work better and far easier in AM. It is really worth the effort to learn the basics in rigging in AM. There are some tutorials on using BVH files on AM skeletons and many have had great results. You would still have to assign cp's (control points that are similar to verticies) to the bones and weight them as well as apply any smart skins to tweak cp positions when a bone is rotated in a particular position. As far as static models I'm not sure if Milkshape would be fine for that or AM, really depends on how simple the poly structure needs to be. Is Unity a BSP based engine like Unreal, Quake etc? Can you create your environment inside it or does it require the geometry for the environment to be created outside such as Renderware? When exporting out a rigged character, would Unity be able to have any influence on the skeletons for environmental reaction and apply physics to that structure or would it be baked in to the animation sequence? In other words would the character slide walking up stairs? If blown up would it be able to ragdoll around in the environment, bounce off walls, crates etc?

You can export out .x and convert that to fbx or collada with Blender or Ultimate Unwrap3d. I'm sure there are other converters. Blender might make for a good converter since it will allow you to tweak anything at poly level since AM is a spline modeler. Are you using the Pro version on Unity? I was looking at the comparison list and the free version doesn't support video streaming. AM supports sequential bitmaps, bmp, png (24/32 bit), tga (24/32bit) as well as Quicktime and AVI. As with any non poly modeler for games there needs to be some consideration on how things are constructed so avoiding hooks which are used for patch reduction need to be considered or tweaked in an outside editor. Some of Your advantages with AM would be: Re-usability of actions across characters that have the same skeletons Rigging is outstanding Smart skins that can simulate muscle bulges Decaling and baking of materials with bitmaps and shaders to create complex surfaces cooked down to single bitmaps for each channel.

That looks great!

Looks like there are some reflections there that don't seem to be doing much, are they the render killer? Also did you try baking some of the textures? Shaders can be time killers and baking them might help.

That does look cool, love to see the final render. Toss a Faux News logo on the chopper? lol

Cool! I noticed you have a crossed spline in the back of the head, maybe from the cfa. Going to fix it or cover it up with really long side burns?

Thanks, I have to check and see if there is an up and down jitter, not quite sure since there is always legs on the ground at all times.

That is great! Wonder what it would cost for AM to aquire TSM2 source and incorporate it in future releases? We could start a national green ribbon fund raising campaign that just happens to coincide with other ribbon based fund raisers..

Finally got some time to get back into doing some animation, been a long long while but here's my first crack at a spider walk. All criticism is welcomed. Ignore the black color and poor lighting, I had to toss it through the old AM for the .mov since the rc1 doesn't support qt yet. Thanks spiderwalktest.mov

Nice! now you just need the pineapple slices.